Sit with those who are awake
or the caravan will leave while you are still asleep.
Rumi
Sunday Quote: Choose conscious living
Tag: heart
Been seen
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the self nor of the other: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
David Whyte
Beannachtaí na Nollaig oraibh go léir
(Christmas blessings from Ireland to all of you who drop by or who read each day)
too much
As the winter solstice approaches, animals and the rest of nature turn towards slowing down and saving, rather than, spending energy. This was echoed in the understanding of Advent as a time for simplification. This is somewhat removed from the excesses which are promoted as being necessary for happiness in the modern celebration of the Season.
We have known for a long time that poverty can destroy the body and render the soul deaf and insensitive. What has yet to be learned is that overabundance of things and enjoyments also devours the soul. An appropriate relation to things, one that does not overwhelm the senses, cannot grow when things are ever present for our consumption. Overabundance destroys the intensity of people and their capacity to enjoy and to be related.
In cultures where asceticism developed and was practiced, people knew that one can suffocate when every option is a readily available one. Without self-limitation, without fixed boundaries – like those given in creation between day and night, summer and winter, being young and growing old – life loses its humanness. Asceticism means to renounce at least for periods of time the options that present themselves. In bygone cultures of poverty there were times for fasting, waking, withdrawing, and keeping silence. Perhaps people believed that life itself could be saved by giving up parts of it.
Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry : Mysticism and Resistance
Living simply
I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening to tire my superfluous worries.
Anna Akhmatova, 1889 – 1966 I Taught Myself to Live Simply
Holding both
Though the years are sad,
the days have a way of being jubilant
Edith Wharton’s autobiography, A Backward Glance
A vale of soul-making
Our path will always be strewn with broken branches and stones, yet even the obstacles in our path are part of the path. They make it real. We are not angels and the hard edges of the physical world offer a resistance that, if they do not break us first, can temper the soul and open it to another world, which is nowhere if not here .
This life is a “vale of Soul-making” Keats says. When we see it that way, being lost is not only part of the journey; it is the royal way of becoming real, meaning that our outer knowing can be an accurate reflection of our inner knowing.
Roger Housden, Ten poems for Difficult Times
Mindfulbalance 